Rare stories in your inbox.

Oops, you forgot to select a newsletter. Select as many as you'd like!

Oops, you forgot to tell us your email address. Try again.

Advertisement

Following the firing of NBC’s Matt Lauer and the subsequent damning report detailing his alleged sexual misconduct towards his coworkers, the network reportedly received two additional complaints about him, including one from a former NBC employee who accused Lauer of summoning her to his office for sex in 2001.

According to the woman, Lauer began making inappropriate comments to her shortly after starting at NBC in the 1990s. While traveling with him for a story, he allegedly asked her inappropriate questions over dinner, including whether or not she had ever cheated on her husband. He later sat uncomfortably close to her in the car on the way to the airport and told her she was “no fun” when she moved away from him.

The woman said Lauer called her to his office in 2001 to discuss a story. Once there, he locked the door, which he could reportedly do with a button under his desk, and told her to unbutton her blouse, which she did. He then stepped out from behind his desk, pulled her pants down, bent her over a chair and had sex with her, according to the woman, who said she passed out with her pants down at some point during the abuse and woke up on his office floor. Lauer’s assistant then took her to see a nurse.

Following the incident, the anchor reportedly never made an advance toward her again or spoke of what happened While she didn’t report the incident at the time out of fear of losing her job, she did tell her then-husband and a friend, both of whom confirmed they had heard her story. On Wednesday, the incident was reported to NBC after the woman told her then-supervisor. She has since been contacted by the network’s human resources department.

“While it is the first complaint about his behavior in the over 20 years he’s been at NBC News, we were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident,” Andrew Lack, the NBC News chairman, wrote while announcing Lauer’s termination, which came after an NBC employee accused the host of sexually assaulting her during the Sochi Olympics. He has also been accused of gifting a sex toy to a coworker with an accompanying note indicating how he wanted to use it on her and of exposing his penis to another colleague, among other shocking allegations.